The effect of high- and low-frequency previews and sentential fit on word skipping during reading

In a previous gaze-contingent boundary experiment, Angele and Rayner (2013) found that readers are likely to skip a word that appears to be the definite article the even when syntactic constraints do not allow for articles to occur in that position. In the present study, we investigated whether the word frequency of the preview of a 3-letter target word influences a reader’s decision to fixate or skip that word. We found that the word frequency rather than the felicitousness (syntactic fit) of the preview affected how often the upcoming word was skipped. These results indicate that visual information about the upcoming word trumps information from the sentence context when it comes to making a skipping decision. Skipping parafoveal instances of the therefore may simply be an extreme case of skipping high-frequency words

Parafoveal-foveal overlap can facilitate ongoing word identification during reading: evidence from eye movements.

Readers continuously receive parafoveal information about the upcoming word in addition to the foveal information about the currently fixated word. Previous research (Inhoff, Radach, Starr, & Greenberg, 2000) showed that the presence of a parafoveal word that was similar to the foveal word facilitated processing of the foveal word. We used the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to manipulate the parafoveal information that subjects received before or while fixating a target word (e.g., news) within a sentence. Specifically, a reader's parafovea could contain a repetition of the target (news), a correct preview of the posttarget word (once), an unrelated word (warm), random letters (cxmr), a nonword neighbor of the target (niws), a semantically related word (tale), or a nonword neighbor of that word (tule). Target fixation times were significantly lower in the parafoveal repetition condition than in all other conditions, suggesting that foveal processing can be facilitated by parafoveal repetition. We present a simple model framework that can account for these effects

Spectral Energy Distributions for Disk and Halo M--Dwarfs

We have obtained infrared (1 to 2.5 micron) spectroscopy for 42 halo and disk dwarfs with spectral type M1 to M6.5. These data are compared to synthetic spectra generated by the latest model atmospheres of Allard & Hauschildt. Photospheric parameters metallicity, effective temperature and radius are determined for the sample. We find good agreement between observation and theory except for known problems due to incomplete molecular data for metal hydrides and water. The metal-poor M subdwarfs are well matched by the models as oxide opacity sources are less important in this case. The derived effective temperatures for the sample range from 3600K to 2600K; at these temperatures grain formation and extinction are not significant in the photosphere. The derived metallicities range from solar to one-tenth solar. The radii and effective temperatures derived agree well with recent models of low mass stars.Comment: 24 pages including 13 figures, 4 Tables; accepted by Ap

Eye movement sequences during simple versus complex information processing of scenes in autism spectrum disorder

Minshew and Goldstein (1998) postulated that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder of complex information processing. The current study was designed to investigate this hypothesis. Participants with and without ASD completed two scene perception tasks: a simple “spot the difference” task, where they had to say which one of a pair of pictures had a detail missing, and a complex “which one's weird” task, where they had to decide which one of a pair of pictures looks “weird”. Participants with ASD did not differ from TD participants in their ability to accurately identify the target picture in both tasks. However, analysis of the eye movement sequences showed that participants with ASD viewed scenes differently from normal controls exclusively for the complex task. This difference in eye movement patterns, and the method used to examine different patterns, adds to the knowledge base regarding eye movements and ASD. Our results are in accordance with Minshew and Goldstein's theory that complex, but not simple, information processing is impaired in ASD.<br/

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7-44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5 – 17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to .2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye-mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts

Effects of intraword and interword spacing on eye movements during reading: Exploring the optimal use of space in a line of text

Two eye movement experiments investigated intra-word spacing (the space between letters within words) and inter-word spacing (the space between words) to explore the influence these variables have on eye movement control during reading. Both variables are important factors in determining the optimal use of space in a line of text, and fonts differ widely in how they employ these spaces. Prior research suggests that the proximity of flanking letters influences the identification of a central letter via lateral inhibition or crowding. If so decrements in intra-word spacing may produce inhibition in word processing. Still other research suggests that increases in intra-word spacing can disrupt the integrity of word units. In English, inter-word spacing has a large influence on word segmentation and is important for saccade target selection. The results indicate interplay between intra and inter word spacing which influence a font’s readability. Additionally, these studies highlight the importance of word segmentation processes and have implications for the nature of lexical processing (serial vs. parallel)

Saccade launch site as a predictor of fixation durations in reading: Comments on Hand, Miellet, O’Donnell, and Sereno (2010).

An important question in research on eye movements in reading is whether word frequency and word predictability have additive or interactive effects on fixation durations. A fair number of studies have reported only additive effects of the frequency and predictability of a target word on reading times on that word, failing to show significant interactions. Recently, however, Hand, Miellet, O'Donnell, and Sereno (see record 2010-19099-001) reported interactive effects in a study that included the distance of the prior fixation from the target word (launch site). They reported that when the saccade into the target word was launched from very near to the word (within 3 characters), the predictability effect was larger for low frequency words, but when the saccade was launched from a medium distance (4-6 characters from the word) the predictability effect was larger for high frequency words. Hand et al. argued for the importance of including launch site in analyses of target word fixation durations. Here we describe several problems with Hand et al.'s use of analyses of variance in which launch site is divided into distinct ordinal levels. We describe a more appropriate way to analyze such data-linear mixed-effect models-and we use this method to show that launch site does not modulate the interaction between frequency and predictability in two other data sets

Skipping syntactically illegal the previews: the role of predictability.

Readers tend to skip words, particularly when they are short, frequent, or predictable. Angele and Rayner (2013) recently reported that readers are often unable to detect syntactic anomalies in parafoveal vision. In the present study, we manipulated target word predictability to assess whether contextual constraint modulates the-skipping behavior. The results provide further evidence that readers frequently skip the article the when infelicitous in context. Readers skipped predictable words more often than unpredictable words, even when the, which was syntactically illegal and unpredictable from the prior context, was presented as a parafoveal preview. The results of the experiment were simulated using E-Z Reader 10 by assuming that cloze probability can be dissociated from parafoveal visual input. It appears that when a short word is predictable in context, a decision to skip it can be made even if the information available parafoveally conflicts both visually and syntactically with those predictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved